9 Mind-Blowing Pieces of Art Made With Ridiculous Materials

#4. Cigarette Butt Sculptures

Definitely the grossest entry on this list. Turns out there are a baffling amount of artists out there who look at old, soggy, stinky cigarette butts and see the building blocks of a fabulous sculpture. Like the dude who made this giant cigarette butt shell:

So, kids -- don't believe movies when they tell you that the life of an artist is all partying and getting laid. If Deininger is anything to go by, it's mostly picking up other people's cigarettes on a beach.

Meanwhile, in Missouri, a public art project combined the natural venn diagram of cigarettes and babies to produce this monstrosity:

It's a pacifier, if you can't tell. Yeah, we're not sure what that's about. We're guessing this is meant to put off children from smoking with how horrible it is. It's like something a stereotypical cartoon villain would create to use as bait for the giant baby he's trying to murder.

#3. M&M Mantelpieces

So you're hosting a fancy dinner, but then you realize you forgot to own a mantelpiece. What could you possibly use to cover your dinner table while making it look classy? Hannah Mendelsohn found the perfect alternative: ridiculous amounts of M&M's.

Via Hannah MendelsohnWhat excuse do we, as a race, have for not thinking of this sooner?

Mendelsohn was only in high school when she first started messing around with the idea that by arranging many, many M&M's on a flat surface you could get some pretty cool looking artwork. Eventually her dreams grew wild and her plan evolved into something much more ambitious, as she decided to make a coffee table covered in quasi-symmetrical geometric candy shapes.

She never glues the candy down though (because what kind of maniac glues candy to a table?), so one bump and it could mean starting all over. Also, unlike most of the artists on this list, Mendelsohn doesn't ever have a set plan -- she just separates the different colors of M&M's, thousands in total, and wings it.

While her friends have encouraged her to get sponsorship for some commissioned artwork from Mars, Inc., so far Mendelsohn hasn't bothered to do that -- which means there is totally a gap in the market that you could be filling. We recommended Starbursts.

#2. Drinking Straw Furniture

The one problem with having a bitchin' M&M's coffee table is that suddenly the rest of your furniture will look pretty lame in comparison. And, sadly, you can't cover a chair with chocolate candy (as we've all found out at some point in our lives). Well, that's what drinking straws are for, it turns out:

Artist Scott Jarvie says he was inspired by the inside of trees (we're thinking there was some sort of special mushroom growing in there), which naturally led him to create a chair made out of 10,000 straws -- plus a working lamp to match.

And if the thought of thousands of sharp plastic bits stabbing into your ass doesn't sound appealing to you, don't worry, there are more comfortable alternatives out there. Yes, there's more than one person in the world making chairs out of straws.

Those are 7,000 drinking straws wrapped in 300 yards of wool and crying out in confused shock and panic. Now dunk it in a bath tub full of tequila and let everybody drink through it!

#1. Giant Lite-Brite Portraits

If you were a child in the 1980s you probably had a Lite-Brite. You know, that glowing box with colored pegs you could stick in little holes (or alternatively put in your mouth and choke on, which was way more fun). If you did, you might have tried to make your mom and dad a nice picture, only to have it come off like a disfigured, utterly disappointing mess.

Photos.comMuch like yourself as a child.

Well, one artist named Steve DeFrank never gave up on that dream and made a huge Lite-Brite portrait of his parents called, quite simply, "Mom and Dad."

Via NPGLuckily for his parents it's hanging in places like the Smithsonian, and not their living room.

You probably don't remember your Lite-Brite set coming with all those shades of flesh: That's because DeFrank hand-dyed thousands of pieces himself especially for this occasion. Also, did we mention that this is actually a full-body portrait? And no, Mom and Dad are not wearing any clothes, so click at your own risk. (Includes droopy boobs and a tiny penis, all rendered out of children's toy.)

Fortunately, other artists like Joey Syta treat their Lite-Brite art with the respect it deserves, like copying an entire medieval tapestry in 1:3 size.

Via Joey SytaBecause sometimes you just have too many Lite-Brites taking up space.

Syta's website says this was done between 2007 and 2009, which probably means the unicorn alone took him like six months. Another artist named Thorin Nelson used the same materials to create this psychedelic portrait of Elvis:

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